South African Airways (SAA) has increased capacity along South Africa’s trunk domestic routes in a bid to keep up with flight demand.
SAA doubles down on routes
SAA has assigned most of its reserve capacity to flight services on SA’s main domestic routes, as well as to Mauritius, in the wake of Comair’s recent collapse. According to SAA’s Executive Commercial, Simon Newton-Smith, the airline will be doubling its mid-week flights to Cape Town from Johannesburg and to Mauritius, while also increasing the number of flights into Durban by up to 67%.
The sudden demise of Comair took around 45% of domestic seat capacity out of the market and placed most of the popular regional routes under immense strain.
Newton-Smith also said that industry data had revealed that the Johannesburg-Cape Town route had lost approximately 34% of available seat capacity, and the Johannesburg-Durban route around 30%.
“We can see other airlines are also increasing flying to bridge the gap, but do not expect that capacity will return to prior levels in the immediate future,” he said.
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LIFT also plans to up capacity
Another local airline, LIFT, is also planning to increase its flight capacity in South Africa in the next few months. The privately owned airline wants to up their normal count of two to three aircraft in service in South Africa, to double, or maybe even triple that, by the next six to twelve months.
Jonathan Ayache, CEO of LIFT, told travel news that the inbound aircraft, which will be A320s, will be used on the airline’s regular routes and that they would not be starting any new routes at the present moment.
“This year, our expansion will be in the number of flights in the Golden Triangle (JNB, CPT, DUR). Our approach is a careful one, we are constantly monitoring demand. Comair exiting the market represents a big opportunity for us and this has expedited our growth, but the environment is still very challenging.” Ayache said.
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